


It’s Not What You Lost, It’s What You’ll Gain

by icewhisper



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Kakashi and Mikoto brotp rises from the depths, they're feral your honor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-13 14:00:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28779423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icewhisper/pseuds/icewhisper
Summary: “You’ll be like his big brother,” Minato-sensei had told him brightly the day they told him they were naming their son after a fishcake.So that’s what Kakashi became.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi & Uchiha Mikoto, Hatake Kakashi & Uzumaki Naruto
Comments: 5
Kudos: 93
Collections: Secret Snipers Exchange 2020





	It’s Not What You Lost, It’s What You’ll Gain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wjh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wjh/gifts).



> Written as part of the Secret Snipers Exchange 2020 for wjh.  
>  **Prompt:** Iruka or Kakashi adopts Naruto.

His father.

_ The house was too quiet. It had always been too quiet after his mother died and his father was disgraced. Too quiet after Kakashi decided everybody else was right – that his father had failed – and turned his back on him too. He found his father on the floor, his body curled up and bloody. Dead. His back to Kakashi like he was saying that, this time, he was the one who was leaving him behind. _

Obito.

_ The pain of his eye was dull, lost behind the shock as he watched Obito’s lips curve up in a sad sort of smile. Rin sobbed when she extracted his eye with bloody and dirty hands. She didn’t mention his own tears while she performed the transplant or the way his hands shook after. _

Rin.

_ Her blood on his hands and – no, no, not again – she was dying. His own hand through her chest. A wound he couldn’t heal. Rin had always been the only one on their team with any hope for medical ninjutsu. She died and his Sharingan – Obito’s Sharingan, he was supposed to use it to protect her, wasn’t he? – changed. _

Kushina and Minato-sensei.

He didn’t get to see their bodies. He’d known the man had been making his stand against the Nine Tails, but Kushina was supposed to be  _ safe _ . She and the baby were supposed to be…

But the Third Hokage stopped him when he reached the clearing and Kakashi knew. He saw the look on the man’s face and he  _ knew _ with the same kind of dread he’d had when he came home and found his father dead on the floor.

Somewhere behind the Third, a baby cried.

“Naruto,” he breathed, thankful for a moment before the panic set in, because Naruto shouldn’t  _ be here _ . He’d known Kushina was close to giving birth, but this was a battlefield. He should be somewhere safe. “Where is he?”

“Naruto?” the old man questioned instead.

“The baby. That’s his name. They decided-” He cut himself off, because he couldn’t talk about it yet. Couldn’t talk about them like they weren’t here anymore.

“You’ll be like his big brother,” Minato-sensei had told him brightly the day they told him they were naming their son after a fishcake. His teacher had sworn it was after a character in his own sensei’s book, but no one was ever going to think of the character before the topping.

Now, there were two less people who knew the real meaning behind the baby’s name.

“Where is he?” he asked again, because the Third still hadn’t answered him.

“Safe,” the man said and, slowly, told him what Minato-sensei had done. It was only practice that his knees didn’t come out from under him. The Nine Tails was sealed inside Naruto and Minato-sensei had died to do it. He and Kushina had both died and, now, Naruto was alone. His parents had both been orphans. They didn’t have anyone else.

He was the one who carried Naruto to the hospital as the baby cried. Tiny and new and with a dark seal laid into his skin. The sight made him sick. It made him want to scream.

They took Naruto from him and glared at the newborn like Naruto was the reason the hospital was full to capacity and why there were still bodies in the street.

Some hurting, angry part of Kakashi agreed with them, but the louder part of him thought that Naruto had his father’s nose and his mother’s lungs.

“You should go home,” the Third told him later as Kakashi watched a pair of medic-nins check over Naruto. He’d finally stopped crying.

Kakashi still hadn’t cried at all and wondered if it was shock or if he’d simply lost so many people that he didn’t have any tears left to shed.

“They’d want me to keep an eye on him,” he said and knew in his gut it wasn’t just sentimentality. They’d called him Naruto’s brother. They’d want him here if they couldn’t be.

“He’ll be watched.”

_ But will he be cared for? _ Kakashi didn’t ask, because there was no point. He had been left alone in his family’s compound after his father died. Orphans had been handed stipends and tiny apartments after the war.

He wondered how many more they’d have to house now.

“Someone should tell Jiraiya,” he added numbly as he thought of the man he’d only met a handful of times. If Kakashi was meant to be Naruto’s brother, Jiraiya was meant to be his grandfather. He needed to know.

“I’ll send a messenger.”

“He’ll take Naruto, right? Someone will take care of him?”

The Third promised someone would.

He lied.

Jiraiya came for the funerals and the official reinstatement of the Third back into the Hokage’s seat, but he didn’t stay. He’d looked at Naruto from the doorway of the hospital room as Kakashi watched and, then, he left.

He should have chased after him, should have demanded an answer. Where was he going? Why wasn’t he taking Naruto with him?

Distantly, he knew Jiraiya travelled and that Naruto with the kyuubi sealed inside his belly, was little more than Konoha’s property now. The beast had to stay under Konoha’s control and there were too many risks in taking him outside the village. Naruto  _ had _ to stay, but Jiraiya didn’t. He should have, Kakashi thought angrily when it was only him and Naruto again. He should have stayed. Kakashi didn’t know what to  _ do _ .

Uchiha Mikoto came by once with her own baby strapped to her chest and sad eyes. People glared at her and whispered, because the rumors were already flying. They said an Uchiha had caused this and she was the clan head’s wife, so she must have known the attack was coming. He didn’t believe it – she’d been Kushina’s best friend. He’d spent ages seeing them with their heads bent together and laughing. He could see the pain on her face now.

He stammered out a protest when she handed her baby to him and only sort of registered her saying the kid’s name was Sasuke before she lifted Naruto out of the crib and held him close to her chest. She swayed with him for a time, murmuring words too soft for Kakashi to hear as Sasuke dozed in his own arms.

He turned his head away when she began to cry.

“Are you going to take him?” he asked when Sasuke’s weight in his arms had stopped feeling foreign and had begun to feel comfortable.

“No,” she said, anger slipping into her tone. “My clan isn’t allowed to. The  _ council _ decided.” She spit it with the kind of anger that had given Kushina her own nickname and he spared a moment to wonder how loudly she’d screamed at the Hokage. He’d seen her with Kushina, but he’d also seen Mikoto in the weeks after Obito died as the clan argued about if the transplant had truly been a gift or theft. She’d stood up for him.

“Then, who is?” he pushed, because there was nobody else. Jiraiya was gone, he was fourteen, and Mikoto was the only other person Minato-sensei and Kushina would have entrusted Naruto to. “People hate him.”

She pressed her lips to the side of Naruto’s head. “Lord Third said he’d go to the orphanage until he was old enough to be given an apartment.”

The orphanage was little more than a stopping ground. Kids didn’t get adopted. They didn’t get  _ families _ . They got a roof over their heads and mandatory enrollment in the Academy to justify the cost of the stipend they’d eventually get when they were put into what most of the village referred to as orphan housing.

And they wanted to abandon Naruto to that.

The Third wanted to subject his own successor’s child to that.

He had to remind himself to not squeeze Sasuke’s little body too hard when his own body went tense. “He’s the Fourth’s son.”

“They gave him Kushina’s last name,” Mikoto told him. “Kushina’s pregnancy was kept fairly quiet, so they said most people don’t know. His relation to Minato is going to be confidential, even to Naruto.”

He wanted to scoff, to ask how willfully ignorant the people could be. Everyone knew Kushina had been the only Uzumaki in Konoha and that she’d been married to the Fourth. Minato-sensei had practically floated through the village for months after Kushina told him she was pregnant. Someone only had to look at Naruto to see how much he looked like his father and the Third thought they could  _ hide it _ ?

But people weren’t seeing Kushina or Minato-sensei when they looked at Naruto  _ now _ , he reminded himself. They looked at him and they saw the demon that tore the village apart.  _ That _ they hadn’t bothered to keep a secret, but Naruto’s legacy would be. His parents would be forgotten so the village could hate him without shame.

“They’re going to leave him alone.” Like him. Like so many orphans.

“Yes.”

Alone and hated for something he had no control over.

The thought stayed with him during his daily trips to the hospital. Other than Mikoto, he was the only visitor.

“We’d hoped they’d be friends,” Mikoto confessed softly when he walked into the room once to find Naruto and Sasuke tucked up together in the same cot as they slept. Mikoto watched them with a sad smile.

It was sentimental, Kakashi thought, but he didn’t have the heart to point it out, so he just hummed in agreement and took the seat beside her.

It was raining the day they officially released Naruto from the hospital and arranged his transfer to the orphanage.

Kakashi tried to pretend it didn’t feel like an omen.

“He’ll be okay, right?” he asked Mikoto as they watched him go.

With Sasuke strapped to her chest and a hand on her other son’s shoulder, she sighed. “I hope so.”

He wasn’t okay.

Kakashi left on a mission the day after Naruto’s transfer and was gone for over a week. He came back to Mikoto on the warpath, saying that the council had decided the Uchiha weren’t allowed continued contact with Naruto.

“He’s a ward of the village,” she told him as her voice dripped with disdain. “They get to make the rules.”

The council hadn’t revoked his permissions, at least. He visited on his own with promises that he’d report back to Mikoto immediately and found Naruto in an old crib in the corner of a drafty room. He was crying and dirty.

He bathed him in a sink that only had cold water and bit his tongue until he tasted blood.

Mikoto was his first stop when he left, even though his feet had wanted to carry him right to the Hokage’s office to ask if he  _ knew _ how they were treating Naruto. Her expression darkened the longer he spoke and he couldn’t fault her for it.

“I want to adopt him,” he finished and spoke the words before he even realized he’d decided on it. He couldn’t just leave Naruto there. The Hokage and the council were cutting Naruto off from the Uchiha because of the rumors floating around, Jiraiya was gone, and the caretakers at the orphanage treated Naruto like he was something evil. Kakashi was all he  _ had _ . The thought of leaving him there until they tossed him out and into an apartment…

Kakashi didn’t want Naruto to grow up the way he did. He’d grown up isolated, hurt, and too fast. Minato-sensei had wanted more for him than that and he couldn’t let Naruto grow up with that same kind of loneliness. Kakashi  _ had _ grown up like that and the loneliness had set so deeply into his bones that he hadn’t known how to let people in until they started dying around him.

_ I don’t want him to end up like me _ , he didn’t say, because even if he’d found an odd kinship with Mikoto, it was a statement that cut too close to the bone for him to expose to someone else.

“They won’t let you,” she told him regretfully. “You’re too young.”

“I only need to be sixteen,” he countered. “I’m already a jonin.” A shinobi was considered more or less an adult when they made genin, albeit with some limitations. In two years, though, he’d be old enough to take custody by village law. By right, they wouldn’t be able to stop him.

Somehow, he had a feeling they’d try to, regardless.

“I need your help,” he told her.

The smile she gave him was all teeth.

He’d decided to adopt a baby and he still wasn’t sure if he was even holding him right.

Naruto shifted in his arms and Kakashi tried to shift his own grip to accommodate it, but it still felt awkward and clumsy. To be fair, though, he didn't  _ drop  _ the kid, so he was doing better than he’d thought he would. If he  _ did _ drop Naruto, he was fairly certain Kushina would resurrect herself just to kick his ass.

“Your mom was scary,” he whispered, head bent towards Naruto in the corner the caretakers had shoved him into. It wasn’t right. The half-broken crib. The neglect. They were punishing a baby – the baby Minato-sensei and Kushina had been so excited for – and treated him like he was the demon instead of its jailer.

For a second, he wanted to ask Minato-sensei what he’d been thinking. Why  _ Naruto _ ? Why a baby that would get left alone? Why someone who couldn’t defend himself?

Had they trusted the Third so much that they’d thought he’d take Naruto in? Had they had the time to consider the things people would say?

“She was scary and your dad was brave,” he pushed on, even though he knew Naruto couldn’t understand. Even with as soft as he was speaking, saying the words out loud was a risk, but they forced their way out of his throat. “They loved you, kid.”

Naruto fell asleep in his arms and Kakashi watched him, hoping he was doing the right thing.

“The caretakers mentioned you’ve been by the orphanage a lot,” the Third said casually eight months down the line when Kakashi came to give a report. “I worry you’re getting attached.”

“I think that’s irrelevant to the mission,” Kakashi countered and the  _ sir _ he tacked on belatedly was probably the only thing that saved it from being disrespectful. Absently, he wondered when he’d lost respect for the man.

Then, he thought of the way Naruto clung to him and cried when he held him or the way he devoured a bottle like he hadn’t been fed all day, and he remembered.

He spent more time at the Uchiha compound than people approved of. The Third and the council both had asked about it more than once and, every time, he shrugged a shoulder and said that they were helping him figure out his way around Obito’s Sharingan. Public record of the kekkei genkai was limited and there wasn’t a feasible reason to  _ not _ accept training, if offered. Bringing an untrained element into the field was a liability that couldn’t be afforded on a normal mission, much less in an ANBU one. He could only figure out so much on his own.

They didn’t need to know about the law books that he and Mikoto poured over late into the night. The less prepared the Hokage and council were when Kakashi could officially adopt Naruto, the better.

He turned fifteen in September and shared a soft smile with Mikoto as Sasuke babbled in his lap.

One more year.

Naruto’s first birthday the following month was a somber affair that started with Kakashi at the memorial stone with Mikoto, segwayed to the orphanage to see Naruto, and ended with him back at the stone to mourn in private.

He traced his fingers over Obito’s name, Rin’s, and Kushina’s before he laid his palm flat over Minato-sensei’s.  _ I’ll take care of him _ , he promised silently as he raised his uncovered eye towards the stars.

People Kakashi loved always died, but maybe Naruto would be different.

Naruto said his first word late, but once he’d said the first, he never stopped.

Kakashi pretended that Naruto saying  _ nii-nii  _ with a wide grin didn’t make his breath catch.

“That’s right, kid,” he murmured into a mop of blond hair. “I’ve got you.”

Someone had trained Sasuke to clap whenever Kakashi came over. He suspected it was Itachi.

“He’s using his smarts for evil,” Mikoto reported with pride when Kakashi told her. If pain-in-the-ass was genetic, he was worried to see what that would mean for Sasuke in the coming years. Fugaku always bemoaned that Sasuke was just like his mother.

“It’s everything you always wanted,” he agreed dryly. “I don’t have a lot of time. You said you needed to see me?”

“Yes,” she said as her expression turned serious. “We need Jiraiya.”

He took the stack of papers she passed him and his eye went wide. “You found their will?”

“Rather by mistake,” she admitted. “Kushina had asked me to hold onto a box for her towards the end of her pregnancy. After… I couldn’t bring myself to look in it until now.” She shifted and pointed towards the seal stamped on the corner of the top page. “Their chakra signatures are there, as well as the Third’s signature as witness. Go to the third page.”

He flipped to it and read. “They gave Jiraiya control,” he breathed as he sat heavily in the chair behind him.

“They knew he was too nomadic to take care of Naruto if something ever happened to them, but they gave him the power to choose who  _ does _ ,” she confirmed. “If we can get that old pervert back here when it’s time…”

“We have to find him first,” he said, but she only smiled innocently back at him. “What did you do?”

“My cat summons  _ do _ love chasing toads.”

Emi came back three weeks later and curled around Mikoto’s legs as she told them she’d found Jiraiya and that he’d agreed to meet. Nowhere near Konoha, though – that had been their own stipulation in organizing a meeting. There was too much suspicion if he organized it within Konoha’s boundaries.

Kumo, Jiraiya had decided. He’d be passing through there in a month as he continued his travels and Kakashi could meet him there. Mikoto looked like she wanted to argue, but she swallowed it back. The Uchiha were being watched too closely for her to leave without people asking questions.

“Any advice?” he asked her.

“Show him a pretty girl and he’ll agree to anything.”

When he got to the bar, Jiraiya looked like he’d already helped himself to half the bottle. He squinted at Kakashi as he sat down beside him, but poured the younger man a glass before he spoke. “You want Naruto?”

“Someone should,” Kakashi said before he could remind himself to be polite to the guy he was asking for help. “He’s being neglected at the orphanage and the council is blocking the Uchiha’s attempts to adopt him themselves.”

Privately, he’d wondered if Jiraiya actually cared about Naruto, but he saw the way the man’s grip tightened on his glass. He cared, Kakashi thought, but he didn’t know how to care and  _ stay _ . He reached into the pouch at his waist and pulled out the copy of the will Mikoto had made. “They wanted you to decide who would take care of him,” he explained as Jiraiya read the pages. “I turn sixteen in September and I don’t want Naruto to spend another birthday in the orphanage.”

“You’re a kid.”

“I’m a jonin,” he said and didn’t shy away when the older man’s eyes fell to the tattoo on his arm. “And ANBU.”

“That’s a lot of responsibility. You want more?”

“I want Naruto,” he told him, firm. “They wouldn’t want him to be alone and no one else is going to do it. Most of the village looks at him like he’s a killer.”

“You don’t?”

“Not anymore,” he said after a moment. In the early days, he’d watched Naruto with too many emotions to truly parse out and there had been anger mixed in with it, but Naruto wasn’t the Nine Tails any more than Kakashi was his own father.

Jiraiya watched him for a long moment and Kakashi met his gaze steadily. There wasn’t any doubt anymore. He wanted Naruto. Minato-sensei and Kushina had wanted him to be a brother to Naruto and that was what he was going to be. He’d do it for them as much as he did it for Naruto.

As much as he did it for himself.

“You have a plan,” Jiraiya said eventually. “Tell me.”

Kakashi did.

“So?” Mikoto urged when he showed up for dinner the night he returned to Konoha. “What happened?”

Kakashi bent to catch Sasuke as the kid stumbled towards him with too-fast feet and settled him on his hip. It was quickly becoming a familiar motion and a familiar feeling of a child’s weight resting on him. He didn’t think the Kakashi of two years ago would recognize him now. “I’m going to need a bigger apartment,” he said, grinning under his mask.

In the moment, Mikoto cheered, but after dinner and after the kids had been put to bed and Fugaku had returned to his study, she wrapped her arms around him in a hug. “He’d be so proud of you,” she told him as she pulled back and cupped his face with her hands, “and of the man you’re becoming.”

Lump in his throat, Kakashi nodded.

“We will find you the best apartment!” Gai declared as they made their way down the street. “It’s past time for you to get out of that tiny place. It’s no place to enjoy your youth!” He looped his arm up around Kakashi’s neck with enough force that they both stumbled and Kakashi shot the other boy an irritated look.

“I didn’t ask for your help,” he reminded him. “All I did was tell you I was looking for another place.”

“The last time someone let you pick your own apartment, you ended up in one the size of a closet,” Gai countered with a teasing grin. “My rival can’t grow if his home doesn’t give him the room to do it!”

“Every time I see you, you give me a headache.”

Still, Gai stayed by his side as they looked at a couple apartments before they found the two-bedroom one near the ramen stand Minato-sensei used to take them to. It was far enough from ANBU headquarters that he wouldn’t worry they were being watched all the time and the space was modest enough. It would definitely get cramped as Naruto got older, but they could always move when that became a problem.

“This one,” he decided, cutting off Gai’s insistence that they try sparring to check the building’s structural integrity. “This is it.”

Gai let out an enthusiastic agreement and Kakashi allowed himself a moment to imagine Naruto running down the short hallway.

It wasn’t the life he should have had with his parents, but it would be better than the one he was living now, he thought. He hoped.

Mikoto came by the apartment hours after Gai, Asuma, and Kurenai had left. She shooed the boys in first as Itachi bowed politely with Sasuke in his arms. “Hello.”

“Yo,” Kakashi returned as Sasuke gave his customary clap. He made a mental note that Itachi wasn’t allowed to babysit Naruto. He didn’t want to know what Itachi would train him to do.

Itachi gave him a small smile in return before he took Sasuke over to the couch. The little brat was getting better at saying Itachi’s name.

He showed Mikoto through the rest of the apartment and, then, to Naruto’s still-empty room. “I’m going to get the stuff for him tomorrow,” he said, but Mikoto didn’t look like she was paying attention. Her eyebrows were furrowed as she glanced back towards the living room. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” she said unconvincingly before she sighed. “They want Itachi to make genin at the end of the year. Fugaku is thrilled.”

“You’re not.”

“He  _ just _ turned seven.”

He’d made genin when he was five. He was a chunin by the time he was six. Somehow, he didn’t think Mikoto would find that comforting. He followed her gaze towards the hallway instead. Itachi was a good kid, if overly formal, but he knew as well as Mikoto did that Fugaku put too much pressure on him.

“Don’t let him do it,” he told her softly. “The war is over. There’s no reason to turn shinobi out so quickly.”  _ Don’t let him end up like me _ , he didn’t say, but he thought Mikoto could pick up on it, anyway. “Just let him be a kid.”

“Be careful, Kakashi,” she warned him fondly. “You sound like you’re growing up.”

He met her smile with a wry one of his own hidden beneath his mask. “Not too much, I hope.”

“Just enough,” she teased. “Are you nearly ready? There’s only a few months left.”

He looked around the empty room, imagining it full of furniture and toys. He still had an old picture of Minato-sensei and Kushina he should frame. “Yeah,” he said, surprised at how calm he felt about it. He’d seen Naruto nearly every day for the last two years, barring missions or hospital stays. The kid called him nii-nii and Kakashi… Naruto was his little brother. “I think I am.”

“You won’t be here much longer,” he whispered to Naruto, voice hushed in the way it always was when he was at the orphanage. Most people ignored them, anyway, content to pretend that Naruto didn’t exist, but he had to be careful. He didn’t know what the Hokage would do if he found out about the plan ahead of time, but it wasn’t a risk he was willing to take when there were only days left before Jiraiya would make it to town and they’d set everything in motion. They needed the element of surprise on this.

He’d turn sixteen at the end of the week and if they did this right, Naruto would be home with him before his own birthday the following month.

Naruto giggled, overbalanced, and fell back on his ass. He stared back at Kakashi, stunned.

Under his mask, Kakashi smiled.

Naruto’s room was ready. He’d spent the entire night before putting the crib together. A small dresser shoved into a corner with a small collection of toys on top. Mikoto had picked most of them out for him and he’d let her take control of that as he handled the rest of the apartment.

He hadn’t had much furniture to move from the old place, but there had been more space to fill and trips to  _ buy a dining table, Kakashi, you’re an adult _ and  _ your bed can’t count as a couch anymore _ that resulted in a trip to stores that mostly included Kurenai picking out stuff that matched instead of the first things Kakashi saw.

He hadn’t told anyone else about his plans for Naruto, but the day he’d first moved in, they’d left Asuma and Gai to handle the first chunk of unpacking while Kurenai dragged him along with her. She’d caught him eyeing a crib and didn’t ask questions, but he didn’t think she suspected. There was a larger chance that simply she thought he’d gotten someone pregnant.

He could have told her, he supposed, but she and Asuma had been doing their little song and dance for as long as he’d known them and Asuma was the Hokage’s son. He trusted the man, but he also knew Asuma was butting heads with his father more and more. The less Asuma knew, the fewer chances that something would get said in the heat of an argument.

As it stood, he’d waited until the night before his birthday to even build the crib. Gai had a horrible habit of just showing up whenever he felt like it and he hadn’t wanted to risk someone understanding the spare room was a child’s room. He’d built it once it got dark, working by the dim light of a lamp until he could shove it against the empty wall and, then, started pulling out everything else he’d hidden so he could set it in its proper place.

Standing in the middle of the room the next morning and looking at the scene around him, he tried to imagine Naruto sleeping in his crib or playing with his toys on the floor. Mikoto had bought him a set of plush shuriken like the ones Sasuke had and he traced the edge of one with his finger as a clock chimed down the hall.

It was time to meet Jiraiya.

Jiraiya was waiting for him a block from the Hokage’s tower, face serious as he passed over the papers he’d collected. Kakashi didn’t stop to leaf through them.

“It’s all here?”

“Should be open and shut, but the council will probably kick up a fuss,” the older man warned him as they walked.

“I’m expecting it.”

Jiraiya nodded, quiet for a moment, but as they began to climb the stairs, he hesitated and fell behind Kakashi by a couple steps. “Who are you doing this for? Minato or Naruto?”

“All of them,” Kakashi said. For Minato-sensei and Kushina who couldn’t watch their boy grow up. For Naruto so he could have the chance to grow up with somebody who cared. For Mikoto who had lost her best friend and had gotten cut off from the little boy she’d hoped would call her Auntie. For Jiraiya who had lost his student and who, in the quiet of the bar months ago, had admitted he’d failed Naruto by leaving. “And for me.”

For him, because he’d thought he’d lost everything. He’d watched Obito die, Rin had died by his own hand, and he had been too late to help Minato-sensei and Kushina, but Naruto was still there. Naruto with his big grin and the way he called Kakashi  _ nii-nii _ had given him a family Kakashi hadn’t had since before things went bad with his own father.

He’d been losing himself in the job for years, trapped in a haze of loss, missions, and blood. Naruto gave him another way.

He loved that little brat.

He hadn’t known he had any heart left to love someone with. He’d figured it had been bled out across too many battlefields to work anymore.

But there was a kid in a shitty orphanage right now who had a bedroom waiting for him at home, because Kakashi wasn’t  _ great _ yet, but he was more of a person than he’d been in a long time.

With a breath, he pushed the door to the Hokage’s office open and cut Danzo off mid-word.

“Good morning,” he said cheerfully as he walked past the council and whatever meeting he’d interrupted to put the papers on the Hokage’s desk. “I’m adopting Naruto.”

All hell broke loose.

At the end of it all, he wouldn’t remember the exact words that were said. He’d remember the dumbstruck looks and shouted arguments as he and Jiraiya both laid out the details. Yes, this  _ was _ legal and all the paperwork was complete. Yes, he had an apartment that would give Naruto his own bedroom. Yes, he really was declining the promotion to ANBU captain. No, he hadn’t lost his mind. Yes, he was ready and willing to make it public that the Hokage and the council were blocking attempts to adopt war orphans if they tried to stop him and he’d make sure everybody knew exactly whose son Naruto was.

There was a petty satisfaction in watching each of the people in front of him realize that they couldn’t stop him without putting Konoha’s integrity at stake.

Jiraiya stood to his left the entire time, piping in when he needed to, but there wasn’t much that could be done against him when Kakashi had a Sannin on his side.

“It’s not a game you want to play,” Jiraiya reminded the Hokage. “Konoha has already caught enough heat for everything that happened with Orochimaru a few months ago and he’s still in the wind. You can’t afford another scandal in the village.”

“Are you  _ threatening _ us?” Koharu sputtered.

“Of course not,” Jiraiya replied with the kind of grin that said, yes, he  _ was _ threatening them. “Consider it a reminder. The village is still rebuilding and you’ll have too many orphans to provide stipends to as they start aging out of the orphanage. Naruto will be one less.”

And one less under their control, Kakashi knew, but didn’t say. Judging from the dark look on Danzo’s face, he knew that Kakashi taking custody meant they wouldn’t have the ability to block the Uchiha from Naruto anymore.

“I’ll be picking him up on my way home,” Kakashi said when the strongest argument someone could cough up was that he was only sixteen and did he really want that kind of responsibility? He reached over and flipped to the last page of the paperwork. “Hokage, if you’ll sign the custody transfer and the petition for adoption. Jiraiya has already agreed to sign as witness.”

He gave a sickly sweet  _ thank you _ when the papers were signed and bowed respectfully before he and Jiraiya headed towards the door. “By the way,” he added as he paused, “as his guardian, Naruto  _ will _ know who his parents are and what he is, but I’ll make sure he knows not to tell the general public.”

He closed the door before they could voice their protests.

He picked Naruto up from the orphanage with Jiraiya by his side and let the older man hold the toddler as he signed the final papers. If he heard Jiraiya murmur some apologies to Naruto for not being there, he pretended he didn’t hear it. 

“Congratulations, dad,” Jiraiya said when he passed Naruto over and Kakashi had settled the boy on his hip. He was too thin. He’d need to take Naruto to a doctor to make sure that got fixed.

“I’m not his dad,” he said simply, bouncing Naruto slightly to make him laugh, “am I,  _ otouto _ ?”

Mikoto was waiting for them at the apartment when they got back, full of hopeful anticipation. He watched the relief wash over her when she saw them and her eyes flash red like she was trying to remember this moment.

“You did it,” she breathed when they were inside the apartment and the door was locked behind them. “He looks so much like his father…”

“He does,” Kakashi agreed. “You want to hold him, Auntie?”

He didn’t need the Sharingan to remember the way she smiled.

Jiraiya left sometime after dinner and some extra time with Naruto so he could say his goodbyes before he returned to his travels. Idly, Kakashi wondered if his research was actually that important or if it was simply too hard for him to stay in Konoha anymore.

He didn’t ask, but he did see the stuffed frog that was left on Naruto’s dresser.

“He’ll come back eventually,” Mikoto told him as she was leaving. “At least he knows Naruto is being taken care of now.” She leaned in to kiss his cheek. “Go get some rest. It’s going to be a hard thing to keep up with when you have a toddler. I’ll see you both tomorrow. You’re coming over for dinner.”

“You just want to drive the council crazy.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said innocently. “I’m just having family over for dinner.”

“I’m not family.”

“Oh, honey,” she sighed as her hand came up to brush fingers against the hitiate that covered his Sharingan. “You haven’t figured it out by now? You  _ are _ family.”

She left while he stared after her stupidly and, then, it was just him and Naruto.

Naruto who, when Kakashi looked over, was curled up in the corner of the couch and more asleep than awake. He scooped him up with a fond smile and carried him to his bedroom to get him dressed in some of the pajamas Mikoto had brought for him. They were a little big, but he didn’t want to irritate Naruto more by changing him again, so he let it stand as he laid him down in his crib.

“Welcome home, kid,” he murmured as he glanced towards the picture he’d framed and hung on the wall. Minato-sensei and Kushina stared back at him with bright smiles.

And if he slept that night with his ass on the floor and his leaning back against the crib, nobody had to know.

The End


End file.
